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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Of Death and Taxes

" They get away with this treatment of people because they call these
men who work under them "sub-contractors," which essentially
means that they need to have a CPA to understand all the
wonderful tax deductions available to them. If only those construction
workers had business degrees! "

My father was a construction worker. He measured out, cut, and lifted
heavy sheetrock onto bare frames of houses, fitting things together like
puzzle pieces with precision and speed. He did this manual labor in
the most extreme climates from Las Vegas to Alaska to Utah to Florida.
He wore flannels and had a beard, and drank whiskey to ease the pain of
the dental work he needed, but couldn't afford. He passed away too
young, as a single parent: zero health insurance, no life savings, no
life insurance. He spent his life building houses for other people, but
passed away in a small trailer that didn't even belong to him.
Everything he'd worked for in his life: a tiny amount of money in a
savings account -- not enough for the dental work that he desperately
needed, but wouldn't live to get.

It baffled me growing up, how my dad could work so hard and so long and
so far away all over the place, and yet we could never make ends meet?
Not just anybody could do the work that he did; drywall is not easy.

During the last 14 years of his life as a single parent of four
children, he never accepted or even sought any kind of welfare handouts.

Are the real estate developers who fail to provide my father and other
construction laborers with a decent living wage, with medical insurance
for their physically exhausting work, with any means to provide even a
small amount of savings for their children ... are those people
ethical? Although I'd love to make the judgment call, I won't say. In
the grand scheme of things, I do know that in this world, there are good
people and bad; that there is no law and nothing that society can do to
"make" people behave ethically -- action (or lack of action) speaks for
itself about the character of the person, and character is what defines
people. My father was perhaps the most honest and humble human being
I've ever known, and he deserved so much better.

To each and every one with a functioning brain out there, considering
voting for Mitt Romney "because he's Mormon" or because you think he can
run America like an efficient business -- please don't. Please, don't.

Never has there been a nominee so delusional as Mitt Romney. The tragic
thing is that there are people who could actually believe that "47
percent of Americans" would be "dependent upon government". Romney
uttered his words at a $50,000 per-plate fundraising event in his
efforts to become President of the United States.

What the GOP does not understand is that wealth obtained from the fruits of others' labors is not and never has been theirs. They did not earn it; thy did not build it. It is just not possible to become as wealthy as they are without using people and denying them their share
simply because it's LEGAL to deny people their fair share. Somehow,
somewhere along the way, the GOP has become indoctrinated with the false
notion that ethics and legality are somehow linked; that "as long as
it's not illegal, it's not unethical."
With platitudes for supposed "Christian" values, the GOP insists upon
enforcements of laws to criminalize social problems while deregulating
and un-criminalizing the very economic causes of those problems.

Truly ethical behavior does not come about from the constructs of
government. Mr. Romney has been able to evade paying taxes on much of
his income by keeping troves of it offshore . . . he's unashamed to
declare that he pays not "a dollar" more in tax than what the IRS code
mandates. So, assuming that manipulation of tax code is legal -- maybe
he's not broken any "laws" per-say -- but is this ethical behavior?

It brings up some interesting points about just how desperate the GOP is to destroy the very checks and balances
that income tax provides. Crying about taxes when there are so many
less fortunate people in the world, the GOP is like a stubborn toddler
whose face is covered in melted ice cream, throwing a rage of a tantrum
because he can't have more.

A certain CEO of a real estate development company we once knew in
Florida pays immigrants "under the table." Some of these immigrants do
landscaping, others do painting and repairs and cleaning at the
buildings and sites he's developing. Once they are done with all the
hard work, the Realtors flock in, snapping photos and finding charming
little catch phrases to be displayed in colorful real estate brochures.
After having the properties spruced up by underpaid workers, his
company is able to "flip" properties and the CEO is entirely convinced
that he alone is entitled to the profits. Those workers he so
"graciously" employed might not be legal yet, so no need to let the
government know about them. CEO pats himself on the back for saving
money in labor costs, avoiding paying income tax or health insurance for
those workers, and considers that he's "done them a favor."

It's a common theme in many circles that employing people in a
"temp" fashion is somehow "doing them a favor". Republicans love
temporary things, which they rationalize absolves them of any moral
duty: temp jobs for temp workers in temp housing. "It's not my
problem" they say. Use people up and throw them away, kick 'em out if when they can't pay the rent. There are millions more where those came from,
all eager to do dirty work for pennies on the dollar.

There are two main mechanisms stealing the wealth from the very people who are earning it:

Underpayment of wages / denial of equity: "Underpaying" can
qualify either "at" or "near" the minimum wage, but any worker at any
pay rate can be considered underpaid when there is a significant
discrepancy between the lowest-paid (even part-time employee, or
contract worker) and the one at the top. Most of the time, companies
are built by groups of people working together as a team; it is not
right for the person who calls himself "CEO" to keep the bulk of the
economic value created by his team.

Overcharging housing: My father and many of the construction
workers he knew weren't able to make it to retirement from their
lifelong endeavors of building of houses (and how ironic is it that men
who build houses for a living cannot afford their own!) . . . So, who
gets all that money from houses that cost so much? Real estate agents,
landlords, and real estate developers -- these people have deluded themselves into
thinking that they are the ones "entitled" to collect rents or
commissions from the labors of other people's work. They collude and
conspire, keeping rents high, robbing people of their very ability to
build equity (and it really is a form of slavery). But don't take my word for it; there's lots of proof out there that this form of modern slavery is working.

Ultimately, it's people -- not economics -- which are responsible for the theft. Most members of the GOP are in a position to do at least one of the
above items, and some are in a position to do both. When there is a
political party that has so much influence over both sides of the coin,
when there is a class of people whose very livelihood is actually
derived from the control and manipulation of the availability of
housing, democracy cannot work. People are unable to establish
themselves (and thus their ability to govern in the fallout of greed) when they are continually driven out.

Although these problems are complex, can the solutions be simple? Is it
time to criminalize unethical behavior? Or is it time to economically
incentivize ethical behavior? Perhaps the best solution lies in the
right mix of both.

My father most certainly did pay income tax, and into Social Security.
But because he barely made $19,000 per year as a single parent, he got
most of that money back at the end of the year. I know this because I
did his taxes the second-to-last full "tax" year of his life.
By the time I grew up and earned my degrees to help him figure out what
was wrong, it was too late.

Not only do real estate developers fail to provide construction
workers with medical insurance or any kind of health, dental, or vision
benefits -- nor do they provide the men doing the backbreaking physical
labor any kind of reimbursement for their tools, automobiles to drive
out to the construction sites, gasoline. They can get away with this
treatment of people because they call these men who work under them
"sub-contractors," (contractors who work for contractors) which
essentially means that they need to have a CPA to understand
all the wonderful tax deductions available to them. If only those
construction workers had business degrees!

Indeed, by the time I earned some accounting degrees and was able to do his taxes, it was too late. My father didn't see
the end of the tax year 2004; the years of physically debilitating work
caught up with him, and he passed away on what should have been the
celebratory day I was set to accept my Master's degree.

Not a day goes by where I don't think about my father. Like many
construction workers, he was used up and thrown away heedlessly by the
mechanisms in the real estate industry, fueled by the insatiable
greed of men with too much money and too few ethics.